1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for virtual machine management among networked servers.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Computer systems today are often networked for data communications and often run several operating systems concurrently through the use of virtual machines—software emulating hardware. An application executing in a virtual machine of a server may, from time to time, receive or send so many data communications packets or messages that the application effectively monopolizes bandwidth available to the server upon which the virtual machine and the application are executing. Other applications executing in the same or different virtual machine on the same server may be unable to operate at high efficiency due to a lack of available bandwidth. In addition, in some cases when one application receives a great number of data communications messages, the application itself may be overwhelmed.